Matthew Hayden, the IPL's top scorer this season, dispatches another ball as the Chennai Super Kings take on the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Photograph: Tom Shaw/Getty Images

Paul Simon sang of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and Heath Ledger, long before the posthumous Oscar, became famous courtesy of 10 Things I Hate About You. In keeping with the numerical and showbusiness theme, it is time to look back at the IPL. The key number here is 20 – moments that we won't forget, how it can improve and who not to invite for a closing ceremony.

1 Hiring an Australian coach is no guarantee of success. The winners, the Deccan Chargers, were coached by an Australian, Darren Lehmann, as were the best team in the league, the Delhi Daredevils [Greg Shipperd]. But the Knight Riders had the former Australia coach John Buchanan and we all know how that went. As Shane Warne is only too happy to stress, the players win games. The Knight Riders were pretty useless.

2 Big-money signings don't always work. Even Sir Alex Ferguson could tell you that; think Juan Sebastián Verón. The Bangalore Royal Challengers won two of six games before Kevin Pietersen left and seven of 10 after Anil Kumble took over the captaincy. Andrew Flintoff's contribution to the Chennai Super Kings' cause was to come up with the worst economy rate of any regular bowler. Tyron Henderson got only two games, and failed in both.

3 Twenty20 is not the preserve of young tyros. As the wonderful Kumble put it after taking his team to the final: "It helps to have seven or so young ones around to do what we older guys no longer can, but you need a lot of skill as well." Experience, too. Loads of it. The old firm of Hayden and Gilchrist topped the run charts and Kumble came second in the wicket-taking list.

4 However, you still need to invest in youth. Warne discovered Kamran Khan and Amit Singh; Bangalore unearthed a future star in Manish Pandey, who scored the first hundred by an Indian. The Deccan Chargers never lost a game when Harmeet Singh played. Sudeep Tyagi had some superb outings for Chennai.

5 Moving the IPL out of India works. Yes, it is an Indian event, but it also has a star-studded international cast. Maybe they can have IPL overseas every four years, and alternate between South Africa, England and Australia/New Zealand.

6 Give the people what they want. Quality. You can moan about domestic cricket not being supported till you go blue in the face, but in these times when the pink slip is never far away, don't expect someone to take time out to watch sport unless he or she's convinced that they're watching the best. The crowds in South Africa lapped it up because they were watching the best players on the planet. Only Ricky Ponting, Mitchell Johnson and the two Michaels, Clarke and Hussey, were missing.

7 Let's have a little more grace. From the requisitioning of corporate boxes to the endless parroting of Lalit Modi's credentials by commentators, there was a big-bully element that couldn't be ignored. Modi deserves enormous credit for doing what he did, and pulling it off. We just don't need to hear about it every telecast.

8Never put a mediocre clown like Shiamak Davar on stage with Eddie Grant. Even less so when he clearly had no idea what Gimme Hope, Jo'anna meant to anyone who had ever resisted apartheid.

9 Don't bench your best bowler. Note to the Knight Riders. No matter what struggles you have with team balance, you must play your best bowler. His name's Charl Langeveldt and he took three for 15 in his only outing. You won, even though the batting was again pathetic beyond belief.

10 The four-foreign-player limit must stay. Sehwag said it must because "it's the Indian Premier League and not the International Premier League". We want it to stay because it prevents teams taking the easy way out and stockpiling the bench with mercenary talent. With more franchises on the cards, there'll be fewer stars rotting on the bench in any case.

11 Assumption creates the mother of all cock-ups. Delhi assumed that Glenn McGrath wasn't fit to play. He thought he was. Once a semi-final place was clinched with games to spare, surely they could have given him an outing to test out those old limbs. As Adam Gilchrist made Dirk Nannes look like a novice in the semi-final, you just wondered what Old Pidge might have done against his old mucker.

12 Keep the boundaries long. Yes, watching sixes being hit is great fun, but we don't want to see them on grounds where the rope is 60 yards away. There were plenty of catches, and spills, in the deep in South Africa. And that's how it should be. Hayden can hit sixes all day. You or I shouldn't be able to.

13 A fielding coach is a great idea. It is the most neglected skill. The Chargers had Mike Young, the baseball guru who worked with Australia's best cricketers. They were outstanding in the field, and won the tournament.

14 Think Akio Morita aka Innovation. Kumble opened the bowling with himself. Part-timers such as Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh (twice) took hat-tricks. In an unpredictable format, the element of surprise is everything.

15 Left-arm bowlers are not better, there are just more of them around. There was a lot of fuss about the wickets that the "wrong-handed" men took, but it ignored the fact that several of the top new-ball operators in the competition (Nannes, Ashish Nehra and RP Singh) bowled left-handed. The new ball gets you wickets. And so does Lasith Malinga, who slings 'em in right-handed.

16 Captaincy is not for everyone. Rahul Dravid seemed relieved and relaxed without it. Sourav Ganguly looked lost when deprived of its oxygen. Gautam Gambhir won every game when Sehwag was out injured. Sachin Tendulkar looked as weary as Atlas. Yuvraj looked bored. MS Dhoni wasn't always unflappable. Warne did what he could with a weak side. Kumble appeared to shed 10 years. Gilchrist was everywhere.

17 Interesting pitches make for great games. We saw only one score in excess of 200. In the semis and final, no team crossed 160. The new ball was a threat and there was turn for the spinners. Maybe every T20 competition should be played on weary end-of-season pitches.

18 Spin is in. Just as Sunil Gavaskar showed how effectively an orthodox leg-spinner could be used in the one-day game (with his deployment of Laxman Sivaramakrishnan's thrilling skills at the World Championship of Cricket in 1985), so the two seasons of IPL have told us that even the best batsmen often flounder against the turning ball. Mind you, that theory is easier to prove when Kumble is exhibit A, Murali exhibit B and Warne exhibit C.

19 Lower ticket prices. They flocked through the turnstiles in South Africa because even a family of four could afford to. A double-header at Centurion would have cost them just under 400 rand (£35). Throw in grass banks, excellent catering and far more polite security, and you'll see how much further Indian cricket has to go to embrace its fans.

20 The players matter most. Don't keep them waiting an hour for the trophy. And there's no need for 500 officials on a dais when there are only 20-odd medals to present. Where's Damien Martyn when you need him?

The roll of honour

Best player A rare summit-clash duck for the man who never failed in three World Cup finals. But you can't argue with 10 catches, eight stumpings and 495 runs. Or the way he inspired his players. Step forward, Adam Gilchrist.

Best batsman Bowlers will be hoping he loses his surfboard soon. All those hours at the beach seem to have made Matthew Hayden even more intimidating. He made 572 runs at 52. Enough said.

Best bowler RP Singh may have walked away with the purple cap, but Kumble was in a different class. Four wickets in the final, and 21 in all, and an economy rate of 5.86. In T20. Ridiculous.

Best game Warne's thrilling derailment of the Mumbai Indians' tournament in Durban. He took out Tendulkar, Jayasuriya and Rahane and then ran out Malinga in Munaf Patel's final over.

Moment of the tournament Gilchrist stumping a bemused Virat Kohli down the leg side off Andrew Symonds. The big man with issues finished with 33 runs (21 balls) and two wickets, and was sensational in the field. If Australia's selectors really think Andrew McDonald is a better option, they know something the rest of the world doesn't.